Media Decision Making

Max Meyerson
mm603815@ohio.edu

Sometimes the biggest stories never hit the news print. Sometimes reporters sit on huge stories that would generate tons of revenue and attract plenty of eyeballs. In the new analytics driven media, clicks have become more important than ethics when it comes to decision making. Teaching young content creators how to make ethical decisions when releasing content is a bit of a lost art. Instead what we are left with are content creators trying to use every statistic they can find to help grow their channel or platform. This video by PwC US on YouTube goes into detail about the analytics behind media and entertainment decisions.

With this kind of philosophy behind the content creation machine that is the internet, we have lost a sense of integrity when it comes to the media. The result is truly ethical media corporations stooping to the level of these content creators in order to stay relevant. In many cases this has led to even more unethical behavior from big media outlets. This article by Sydney Smith details the 10 biggest challenges the media has faced in the last four years. There is no doubt with the way the modern media landscape is there have been many challenges presented in the last few years that were not issues in years past. The main problem with a lot of the issues she points out is that companies were either too quick or too slow to react to certain issues. The 4th biggest issue on her list was reporting on ongoing or recent attacks. When is it ok to report on something? If you report too early without proper information on the issue you can make mistakes in assuming things. On the other hand the public deserves instant feedback on ongoing attacks or serious criminal activity. These are the kinds of decisions that big media companies deal with on a daily basis. The Ethics Journalism Network came out with their five biggest principles of ethical journalism. Really it could have been four because truth and accuracy and fairness and impartiality are more or less the same thing. However, their principles still hold true. Media members need to be held accountable for the content that they produce, they should be held to the same moral standard as everyone else. 

Overall I thought we did an excellent job in class of going over specific case studies and understanding how to make ethical decisions. We as groups were asked to breakdown specific cases that related to media ethics. We were asked if we would have done things differently and what ethical codes we applied in order to come to that decision. This was the type of fun, informative exercise we should be doing on a regular basis. Why not learn from real life media events and place ourselves there and form our own ethical decisions. Overall this may be the most important stuff we learn this semester. I only hope that all media ethics classes around the country teach these same principles and codes to their students. If they did perhaps we would not have the media be as divisive as it is now.